Thoughts On… Hurricanes, FEMA, and Misinformation in Times of Crisis (Part I)
In this new Thoughts On... post, we take a deep dive into understanding how hurricanes form, the dangers they pose (as seen with Helene), and how climate change factors into future hurricane seasons.
Introduction
With the recent damage caused by Hurricane Helene, and with Hurricane Milton currently looming over the coast of Florida, hurricanes have been on everyone’s mind throughout the past few weeks. Hand-in-hand with natural disasters like these, however, are opportunities for misinformation and attempts to promote conspiracy theories or other damaging rumors. As a born and raised Floridian, it has pained me to see how these disasters are being used to manipulate and mislead not only the residents of our state, but the nation at large.
In responding to the misinformation that has arisen in the wake of Hurricane Helene, I will be splitting this Thoughts On... post into two parts. To contextualize the last few weeks and lay the groundwork for debunking some of the misinformation, we’ll begin with an explanation on how hurricanes form, the damage inflicted by Hurricane Helene and the threat posed by Hurricane Milton, and what hurricanes will be like in the years to come. Then, we’ll focus on debunking the misinformation circulating on social media platforms and assess why these ideas have come about and who they may be servicing. In this first part, we’re going to start with the basics of what hurricanes are and work our way up to the hurricane trends we’ve seen lately and what they can tell us about the years to come.
Hurricanes 101
If you’re not from Florida, the surrounding coastal states, or U.S. territories like Puerto Rico, odds are that hurricanes aren’t something you think about very often. So, we’ll begin by covering the basics of how hurricanes form, how we classify them, and what the consequences may be for those who are in their path. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), whose National Hurricane Center is crucial for keeping track of hurricanes and projecting their paths, defines hurricanes as “powerhouse weather events that suck heat from tropical waters to fuel their fury.” Hurricane season, or the time of year in which you can expect to see hurricanes forming in the Atlantic, officially begins on June 1st and ends on November 30th.
Hurricanes usually begin their journeys as tropical storms that form over the ocean–typically in the Atlantic Basin, which includes the Gulf of Mexico–and gain power as they move into areas of warm air and moisture like the tropics. Warm air moves into the storm, rises, cools, and forms storm clouds. The rising of the warm air causes a low pressure environment, meaning that more air will rush in to replace the warm air that has risen into the storm, feeding the storm’s growth. Due to earth’s rotation, the storm will also begin to spin, with winds gathering the storm clouds into a swirl formation.
A hurricane’s strength is often measured using the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, which ranges from 1 to 5 based on the hurricane’s maximum sustained winds. If you’ve heard the term Category 4 or 5 being used in reference to Hurricane Milton, the Saffir-Simpson scale is what that term is referring to. The scale is also a measure of how much damage is predicted to occur based on the strength of the hurricane’s winds. Category 3 and higher is considered a major hurricane with life-threatening consequences. These can come in the form of severe wind damage (especially as common objects can become projectiles that can inflict further damage to structures like homes or power lines) as well as flooding and storm surge, which is a rise in water level that can be especially deadly for coastal areas. Hurricanes can level homes and cause millions in damage, take down power lines and render entire areas powerless, and, at worst, kill. Their danger cannot be overstated, especially once a hurricane crosses the threshold into Categories 3 and higher.
Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton
While it’s important to know the general mechanisms by which hurricanes form, each hurricane is unique in its trajectory and impact. To really understand what’s at stake, it’s important to know the characteristics of a hurricane and what factors play into its impact on an area.
Let’s begin with Hurricane Helene, which recently passed through Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas two weeks ago. This hurricane first formed off of the Yucatan Peninsula, gaining power as it traveled north through the Gulf of Mexico. Concerning reports of the hurricane’s growth led President Biden to approve a statewide emergency declaration in Florida as well as emergency requests for federal aid from Florida and several surrounding states. At time of landfall, Hurricane Helene was a Category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds reported at 140 miles per hour. The hurricane made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region, bringing with it a storm surge of up to 15 feet.
While it was soon downgraded to a tropical storm after landfall, Helene continued up and through Georgia and the Carolinas, where it released a historic 11 and 30 inches of rain, respectively, causing major flooding in these areas. While that may not sound like much, these floods wiped whole towns and villages off the map. The damage, as you may have seen on news sites or social media, is so widespread in these states that we still don’t know the extent or the long-term effects. The death toll currently sits at 223 people, but may continue to rise as hundreds remain unaccounted for. Some communities, particularly in the Carolinas, remain isolated in the wake of damage and power outages.
Only two weeks later, another major hurricane is already barrelling towards Floridian communities, some of which have not had the time to rebuild and repair in Helene’s wake. Hurricane Milton began as a tropical storm with 60 mile per hour winds on Sunday October 6th and, within 24 hours, became a Category 5 hurricane with 175 mile per hour winds. If that sounds fast, it’s because it is–Milton now holds the record for quickest intensification period from storm to major hurricane. While the intensity of the hurricane has been fluctuating in the past day or so, it is currently projected to make landfall on Wednesday night as a Category 3 or 4 storm. Worse still, the storm is expected to retain hurricane levels of strength as it crosses central Florida.
Between high speed winds, record levels of expected storm surge, and possibilities of tornado formation, Milton is expected to be incredibly damaging and dangerous. To get people out of harm’s way, mandatory evacuations have been implemented in areas of Tampa Bay. However, it’s important to mention that just because you should evacuate doesn’t mean that everyone can. The reality is that there are many barriers that can prevent someone from evacuating, leaving citizens in the lurch. Between traffic, gas shortages, and price gouging on flights out of the state, evacuation isn’t as simple as just getting up and going. Additionally, some people don’t even have the luxury of choice–several jails and prisons within the evacuation zones chose not to evacuate their inmates ahead of the hurricane. For those who stay, boarding up windows and lining their properties with sandbags are some of the precautions they can take to attempt to mitigate damage.
The extent of the damage will not be known until the hurricane has left Florida in its wake. Right now, we can only do what everyone in the state of Florida is doing: watching and waiting with bated breath.
What This Means For The Future of Hurricanes
You may be wondering: isn’t it odd that two high-powered hurricanes have formed and made landfall back-to-back in such a short amount of time? The answer is yes, with some scientists calling this hurricane season the weirdest they’ve seen in a long time. While hurricane season officially lasts from June to November, peak activity usually starts around mid-August and lasts through mid-October. This year, however, this part of the hurricane season has gone by in an abnormally quiet fashion. Record low activity was recorded in August and September, baffling scientists. This quiet period unfortunately wouldn’t last, with five different hurricanes–including Helene and Milton–emerging between September 26th and October 6th. With three hurricanes in October alone, these developments mark a grim portent of what’s to come.
So, what’s underlying this increase in activity and in such high-powered storms? The answer to this question has become somewhat of an elephant in the room, omnipresent but uncomfortable to name, particularly since not every American believes it’s real: climate change. While some may choose to indulge in their skepticism, those of us who live in the areas being affected by hurricanes know what we’ve seen and what we’ve lived through. And, the truth is, it’s getting worse.
What is it about climate change that makes hurricanes worse? Namely, it’s the increased warmth that results from the greenhouse gas effect in our atmosphere. If you’re not familiar with this concept, it’s when solar radiation from the sun comes into our atmosphere, bounces off of the surface of the planet, and either escapes our atmosphere into space or is absorbed and released again into the atmosphere by greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. While this has always been a unique hallmark of our planet, increased levels of carbon dioxide and other gases has resulted in increased levels of heat retention in our atmosphere, warming the planet. In the context of hurricanes, this warming increases the temperature of both the air and the ocean, meaning more favorable conditions for hurricanes to form and more fuel for rapid growth. This has been confirmed by data taken on Helene and Milton–for example, in the case of Helene, the Gulf of Mexico was calculated by the World Weather Attribution to be 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit higher than average, fueling its intensification. Whether we want to admit it or not, climate change isn’t going anywhere, and hurricanes are only going to grow more dangerous.
Resources and Where We’re Going Next
To stay updated on Hurricane Milton’s predicted trajectory and strength, make sure to follow NOAA’s National Hurricane Center for the latest updates. FEMA also has a page dedicated to Hurricane Milton with resources for Floridians. If you’re in the path of the hurricane, make sure to follow instructions from local officials. For more information from the Florida Division of Emergency Management, click here. For specific county resources, click here. For those who are not impacted but want to help, consider donating to national organizations like the American Red Cross as well as state and local organizations like the Florida Disaster Fund and Feeding Tampa Bay.
In part two of this Thoughts On… post, I’ll get into the misinformation that has been circling around on social media platforms, debunk claims on climate manipulation and federal government response, and discuss why we should be skeptical of politicians and public figures who attempt to use natural disasters as a means of forwarding their own platforms and ideologies. Until then, stay safe.